MAAX: “UNHOLY ROCK N ROLL”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Oct 262011
 

I don’t know any actual zombies, reanimated corpses, or other manifestations of the walking dead. Not personally. But I can imagine that when they congregate among themselves to get shit-faced and party like the fucking ghouls they are, they’re crankin’ the new album by Maax.

I’ve been fumbling around trying to decide on a genre label for this music. As I listened to the first track, “Coldest Steel”, I was thinking “death ‘n’ roll”. But as I moved deeper into the grisly vomit-rocket of this album, that didn’t seem to fit. Later, I thought about “thrash ‘n’ roll”, because most of the songs do sound like a breed of thrash, but “thrash ‘n’ roll” really doesn’t capture the gory filth that pervades the music.

“Slut-fucking black thrash ”n’ roll”? I suppose that could work. “Alcoholic heavy metal hellfire”? Yeah, that has possibilities. “Entombed meet Motorhead, get blasted, and then dress up in the freshly flayed skin of the just dead and start jamming”? That’s getting closer. But I finally decided that the band itself nailed the description in the title of the sixth track: “Rot and Roll”. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

EPISODE 13: “ULTIMATE STERILIZATION”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 252011
 

Episode 13 is a Turkish metal band who we’ve featured once before at NCS — though it was in July 2010 when we did that (here). Since then, the band have released their third album called Death Reclaims the Earth. That album was finished at the time of our earlier feature, but hadn’t yet been released because the band was looking for a label outside Turkey to increase exposure to their music. The one they found is a personal favorite of mine — Misantrof AntiRecords, the non-commercial Norwegian label founded and run by Daniel Vrangsinn (Carpathian Forest, Vrangsinn).

Vrangsinn’s philosophy is to let bands retain full creative control and ownership of their work. He provides a platform for distributing the music — free of charge for downloads. I’ve found lots of great shit through Misantrof, and so seeing the partnership between them and Episode 13 was a nice discovery. Death Reclaims the Earth is available for download at Misantrof (here), either as high-quality FLAC files or as mp3’s.

Misantrof released this album last October, but I was diverted with other shit at the time and just overlooked the news. What reminded me of the album was a recent Episode 13 post on FB that featured one of the tracks from the album called “Ultimate Sterilization”. So, I stopped and listened to the song, and I’m really glad I did. I think you’ll be glad you did, too. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: REGENTS

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 252011
 

Short video previews and promos for new albums are rarely memorable. But watch this one. This one is above average. As soon as it ended, I went immediately to listen to the music, and that led to this post. Watch this, and I bet you’ll be curious about the music, too. If I lose the bet, I’ll send you . . . uh . . . a fond wish.

More about Regents and their new EP after the jump. Continue reading »

RUDRA: “NOW THEREFORE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 252011
 

Latecomers to NCS may not know about Singapore’s Rudra. And old-timers may have forgotten. For me, their latest album, Brahmavidya: Immortal I, was one of the highlight discoveries of the current year. It completes a trilogy of albums that began with 2005’s Primordial I and continued with 2009’s Transcendental I. I went on and on (and on) about the new album here, so I’ll keep the comments about it in this post brief: It’s really fucking good.

Standing near the intersection of melodic black metal and death metal, Rudra have taken inspiration from Vedic Sanskrit literature and created something that’s interesting and powerful and quite memorable.

I was reminded of Rudra when I discovered yesterday that they released a music video for a song called “Now Therefore”, which is the opening track on Immortal I. This seems to have been out since August, and I missed it. It’s not nearly as fascinating as the video they did for “Hymns From the Blazing Chariot” (from Transcendental I), but “Now Therefore” is a helluva good song. So, check out some Vedic metal after the jump. Continue reading »

KVELERTAK, SKELETONWITCH, TOMBS, AND PSYCHIC LIMB: LIVE ON A BOAT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Oct 252011
 

At approximately 7 p.m. on October 22, 2011, a small cruise boat called the Jewel left the Skyport Marina in New York City. On board were a gaggle of metalheads and four very good metal bands — Kvelertak, Skeletonwitch, Tombs, and Psychic Limb. Also on board was a dude named (((unartig))), armed with A/V recording equipment. He vividly caught portions of all four performances on film. And by “vivid”, I mean that he caught the look, the feel, and the rampant energy of these performances. You feel like you’re right in the middle of the mayhem. Shit, I can almost smell the sweat and the beer just from watching these clips.

I’ve put all the clips after the jump. These are definitely worth the time. Continue reading »

VALLENFYRE: FULL ALBUM STREAM

 Metal News  25 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

We’ve been fixated on the forthcoming Century Media album by the UK’s Vallenfyre since we first heard excerpts from the band’s two-song Desecration single in August. We’ve followed news about the band and A Fragile King with slavish fervor since then, and have watched as hunger for the release has spread like wildfire — at least among fans with a discriminating taste for old-school European death-doom.

The latest piece of news — and it’s a big fucking piece — is that the entire album is now streaming at the Hails and Horns web site. Even better, there’s a feature accompanying the stream that includes track-by-track comments by the band’s founder/songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost), plus a revealing interview.

I’m going to withhold any detailed comments about the music for now, because we’ll have our own review. I’ll simply say that this is everything I hoped and expected it would be. GO HERE to listen. And make sure you have un-interruptable time on your hands, because once you start, you really won’t won’t to stop before hearing all of it.

DIMMU WILL ENTHRONE DARKNESS TRIUMPHANT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

I’m writing this post just to show how much we here at NCS love all of our European brethren and sistern (sistern?) even though we are not ourselves European and even when we also want to hate our European brethren and sistern because of opportunities they have that we lack. Such as this opportunity:

Dimmu Borgir will be playing a series of shows during the month of November at nothing but small clubs in the UK, Ireland, and on the Continent. There will be no support acts. Each performance will consist of two sets. In the first set, the band will play one album in its entirety. It won’t be the latest album. It will be . . . wait for it . . .  1997’s Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. Color me green with envy.

The second set will be a selection of Dimmu “classics” from a variety of other albums in their substantial discography.

After the jump, you can see all the dates and places where Dimmu will be doing this. We’re also including links to places where you can buy tickets, though I suspect tickets will be tough to come by. Good luck. Also after the jump, because I’m now thinking about this, two tracks to stream from Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. Continue reading »

MORE MONDAY GOODIES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 242011
 

It’s shaping up to be a very metal week. On top of everything else we’ve done so far today, I’ve discovered new music and videos from three bands whose music I admire, and so I’m just going to stitch them together in this post, and then wait to see what else comes our way before the day is over.

First up is a brand new official video from Darkest Hour, for a song called “Your Everyday Disaster” off the latest album (The Human Romance, reviewed by our own Andy Synn here). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve witnessed a Darkest Hour live show, but I never get tired of it. Those dudes never fail to bring it, with a blast of high-intensity energy. The strobe-like editing of the video (which includes “backstage” clips as well as live shots) captures something of that adrenaline-charged experience.

After that, I’ve got a new song from a Hungarian band called Meankind, whose free debut EP TheMadIsraeli reviewed here. That review, by the way, includes a speed-chess video for a Meankind song called “Incomprehensible Appetite”, which is still one of my favorites this year. The new song is called “Mantrap”. It’s more speedy, hard-hitting Meankind death metal.

And last, but not least, we have the latest offering from RXYZYXR. The last time we featured this multinational group (here), we were having fun with a new video for a song called “Nonzero” — still a blast of a video to watch and a blast of a song to hear. Now, the band have put up for streaming a re-worked version of a song called “Fractal Scout”, which originally appeared on their instrumental-only, four-song debut EP, Geometrical Metal. The new version includes vocals by Thomas Wills, who became part of this project after the EP was first released. Thomas’ vocals include lots of cleans, but we’re making an exception to our usual rule, because we like this song.

All these goodies are after the jump . . . Continue reading »

ANIMALS AS LEADERS: “WEIGHTLESS”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

(Today is something of a rare instrumental metal day at NCS. Following our review of the new album by Odyssey, TheMadIsraeli provides some thoughts about the sophomore effort from another NCS favorite, Animals As Leaders.)

Animals as Leaders, and more importantly Tosin Abasi, proved themselves to be quite the anomaly when they released their self-titled debut in 2009. The trio’s combo of instrumental djent, jazz and electronic music in tandem with Abasi’s top-notch proficiency in the shred department created a sound completely unique at the time. Now we have Animals As Leaders (or AAL from here on) laying on us a new album of musical mindfuckery by the name of Weightless, and I’m telling you now, this album is a trip.

Weightless takes the formula established on AAL’s debut and ratchets everything up to 11 — not doing anything dramatically new, but making a tried-and-true sound even better than it was originally. This enhancement is instantly apparent in opener “An Infinite Regression”. After an eerie, tapping intro, AAL blasts open the door with cacophonous drumming and noisy, low-end, 8-string tapping, and the stage is set for the song’s main melody, a quite apprehensive and dark one at that.

Throughout the elaborate melodic layers of Weightless, there is a pronounced feel of a dreamlike state, but it all comes with an overhanging sense of tension. Songs like “Earth Departure” demonstrate this perfectly, whereas other pieces like “Odessa” simply step into the brain with the kind of twistingly atonal-and-then-melodic back-and-forth that only the best of jazz fusion usually musters. Other songs such as “Do Not Go Gently” prove AAL’s ability to convey a mood and tell a story by the cadence of the song alone, the melodies and rhythms both contemplative in their nature but otherwise functioning as quite separate entities, like two streams of thought meeting and becoming one. Continue reading »

BIRDS ON THE WIRES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

I found this on a fascinating web site called The Ark In Space. One day a dude named Jarbas Agnelli saw a picture of birds on electric wires in a newspaper he was reading — the same picture you’re seeing in the top half of the frame up above. He noticed that the positions of the birds looked like a piece of musical notation.  So, he decided to see what kind of melody might be created based on the position of the birds on the wires, as shown in the photo.

He contacted the photographer who had taken the original picture, who also became intrigued by Agnelli’s idea.  That led to a further story in the newspaper, and Agnelli pursued his idea diligently, creating an animation based on the photo, accompanied by the musical score he created based on the birds’ positions. He says there is absolutely no Photoshopping involved here — that the melody is created from the exact positions of the birds on the wires.  Check it out after the jump.

Now, this was so cool that that we here at NCS decided to do something similar with . . . other birds. You can also see and hear the results of our experiment after the jump. Continue reading »

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